A rant about classified ads

The dogs woke me up this morning needing to pee, and the need for fresh coffee and internet time outweighed the need for sleep, so here I am surfing Craigslist, drinking dark roast with a touch of half-and-half, and generally enjoying life.

Until I realize that I have a rant welling up inside me... and I have to let it out.

Okay, listen up people. I'm only going to say this once:

RULES FOR SELLING THINGS ON THE INTERWEBS:

1. LIST WHAT YOU ARE SELLING IN THE TITLE.

This should go without saying, but so do a lot of things. You will get a lot more attention if people actually know what you're trying to sell. When they browse, they cannot see your whole ad. Now I know you're looking at the whole ad when you write it because it's on the same form and all, but try to stop thinking about NASCAR and when you can drink your next Bud Light without getting fired long enough to wrap your mind around this: We can't see your whole ad when we browse. We need to click on the link. We're less likely to click on the link if all we see is "FOR SALE."

Saying "FOR SALE" on a site devoted things that are, in large part, entirely "FOR SALE" in the first place is not only redundant, it makes us question your sanity, intelligence, a little of both, or a lot of both. After all, if I'm interested in buying some sort of consumer product second-hand, I'm going to be interested in what sort of condition it's in, and whether it's been taken care of. If the person I'm buying it from (this would include you, Mr. I put FOR SALE in the title on Craigslist person) appears to harbor faulty thought processes, then I'm not entirely predisposed to take the transaction much further than a shrug or a subvocal "meh."

One example of a faulty thought process is this: "I know everything for Craigslist in the FOR SALE section is being offered for sale, but just in case people don't know, I'll be safe and put FOR SALE in the title... I don't want anybody emailing me asking if they can rent my old truck wheels with 70% tread left on the tires."

The reason I'm not interested in buying from those with faulty thought processes is that there's a certain amount of trust involved. Let's look at Zeke, who has just listed a mint-condition Nikon F100 film camera on Craigslist, entering "FOR SALE" into the subject line. He keeps his camera on his workbench, where he also does household repairs and crafts NASCAR memorabilia out of beer bottle caps. Now if Zeke were a right-thinking person, he'd know about the FOR SALE rule. He'd also know not to use the F100 as a hammer to get those troublesome bottle caps to line up after he'd glued them to the Dale Earnhardt Jr. Official Bottle Cap Model Kit that he bought at Wal-Mart. But since I obviously can't trust him to know the FOR SALE rule, I have no reason to trust that he knows the "Don't use cameras as hammers" rule. See how that works?

2. INCLUDE A PICTURE

It was okay not to have a picture in 1992. Less okay in 2002. Now, it's not acceptable. Digital cameras that can take decent pictures can be had for $20. If you can't muster up the $20 and the effort to post a picture, then I can't muster up the effort to click through to your ad.

Posting a stock picture is worse than no picture. Putting a picture that was obviously taken in a studio and used for marketing purposes and saying "it looks exactly like this!" makes us wonder how much it doesn't look like that any more after it's been in your hands. We can just imagine the dents created in our potential purchase as you used it to beat those pesky beer bottle caps into place.

3. SPELL WHERE YOU LIVE CORRECTLY

Seriously. We can overlook typos and spelling mistakes and gross abuse of the English... sorry, American language. But please spell your town of residence correctly.